


and let your son grow up

by spacestationtrustfund



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Homesickness, Identity, Language, Loneliness, Nostalgia, houseplants, hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own, in the old greek sense of the word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 09:56:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19827742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacestationtrustfund/pseuds/spacestationtrustfund
Summary: A treatise on loneliness.





	and let your son grow up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sonatine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonatine/gifts).



There are three tiny plants lined up along the edge of the Katsuki-Nikiforovs’ second-storey balcony railing: succulents, generic and small, in their little round ceramic pots. One of them might be a bamboo stalk; he's never seen one in real life before. The sky is the grey colour of pencil lead, and heavy with clouds, the threat rain. Otabek stares at the little plants in their little pots for a moment, thinking about the possibility of a thunderstorm, and then turns around to go back inside the apartment.

Yuuri is cooking something at the stove, earbuds in, bobbing his head along with the music in his headphones.

Viktor, sprawled on the couch with his phone, looks up when he sees Otabek. “Beka!” he calls out, patting the adjacent cushion happily. “Come sit.”

Otabek sits. He smooths his hand over the cushion, carefully. A memory comes to him, unbidden: sitting on the plump maroon cushions with their purple tassels, back in Alma-Ata before everything happened, with his family. His mother fixing his hair with resigned patience, humming endearments in maghrebi darija, in qazaqsha. His father handing him a dish of curry and rice. And then: _we've found you a skating teacher, from Resey. Yakov Felcman_.

It hits him, then, that this must be what being lost feels like.

“Remind me how long you plan to stay,” says Viktor. He bends over and puts out a hand for Makkachin to lick, to rub a wet nose against.

Otabek doesn’t know. He also doesn’t particularly care. “A week, at most,” he says, the first thing that comes to mind. It might as well be a week. Why not? He sets a hand on Makkachin’s silky head. His fingers and Viktor's fingers: almost overlapping, but not quite. Viktor's hands are thin, white, delicate; the knob of each joint is visible, the line of each purplish vein. Otabek says, “I need to get back to Japan at some point. I think there was something promising.”

A cold case, most likely. A dead end. It's not that nobody wants him. It's just that he doesn't fit. And of course they always call it _something promising_. Something promising: a change of pace, a solidity amidst the inertia. There would be something to push against, a wall to throw himself at until he could batter down into nothing this swelling stretching ache lodged inside him. It expands every time he tries to breathe, jabbing its sharp edges into his lungs, wrapping itself, sinuous and tender, around his throat, spreading into his chest. He feels like a bubble drifting ever closer to something pointed. He feels like a dead leaf waiting to be crushed underfoot. He feels lost.

It could be something clear and crystal like what Yuuri and Viktor have, something immutable and shining. Yuuri and Viktor have each other.

And Viktor speaks Russian. He speaks Japanese with Yuuri, halting and still awkward, but Yuuri's face lights up with a soft comfortable glow of pride and contentment every time Viktor stumbles his way through saying _ohayō watashi no ai_ or _watashi wa manzoku shite imasu_. But Viktor speaks Russian to Otabek: he doesn't speak qazaqsha, and he certainly doesn't know a word of his mother's darija. Otabek understands the Russian well enough; he spent enough time training with Yakov to be capable of conversation. But as familiar as the language sounds, something is still slightly _off_. It isn't qazaqsha, no matter how close it sounds if he closes his eyes and half drifts off. It isn't the same language as he remembers, as he misses, from home.

“Well, you have to stay for another few days at least,” Viktor decides. “Little Yuri is supposed to visit the day after tomorrow.”

Otabek thinks about it.

He can’t remember the last time he saw Yurio. No; wait, he remembers: it had been in Lisbon, at the airport, while Otabek was being ushered one way and Yurio was being shepherded another. Giacometti was there, as well, one arm around Yurio’s leopard print clad shoulder.

Otabek had waved. He thinks Yurio had seen him, looked at him with those soldier's eyes he'd first seen at Yakov's training camp, but he hadn’t expected a smile in any case.

Moving over and over, changing cities and people and emotions. That rainy day sleepiness and big city bustle that leaves you anonymous and raw at the same time.

Everyone he passes on the street knows the name of the famous skater Otabek Altin, but no one knows who _he_ is; when asked to pick him from a line up, it would be easy, but in a crowd no one spares him any of their attention. He is no more than another face in a sea of faces.

Back in Qazaqstan, everyone knows of him. He doesn't know which would be better. He doesn't want to be a hero, _Qazaqstannıñ batırı_ ; he wants to go home. He wants his mother to kiss the part of his hair and sit at the end of his bed and sing _Aq tilek_ again, singing: замандары шат болсын дастарханы тоқ болсын, ұлың өсіп бай болсын. He wants his father to grip him tight in a big bear hug and tell him stories about the time he went to California before marrying Otabek's mother. He wants his parents to call him Otarbek Altyn again. He is tired of being called by that Uzbek name, of being seen as öezbekstaniy when he's nothing of the sort. He's sick of people not knowing anything about him outside of his own country. His own little country.

Lost between cities and lives and people. Too much of everything. Liminal and lonely and holding tight to particular things.

His mother would tell him: _bul öemür sürwdiñ jolı joq_ ; this is no way for you to live.

Yurio arrives as promised, the day after tomorrow. He drops his bags behind the couch, tugs one hot pink earbud out of his ear, and subsequently throws himself onto the couch. His hair is longer, unkempt, although the slight wave at the ends suggests the fading traces of a braid. His jacket, a tiger striped jean hoodie, is at least four sizes too big. He is wearing his typical black skinny jeans and a bewilderingly patterned t-shirt.

He yawns widely and says, “Yo, old man, what’s for dinner?”

“I’m making katsudon,” says Viktor, coming into the living room and enveloping Yurio in a hug as Yurio squirms and makes faces like he never stopped being fifteen.

“It’s a tradition,” Yuuri adds. He slides his arm around Viktor’s waist when Viktor lets go of Yurio. "You remember the first meal we made for you, when we moved into this house?"

Yurio rolls his eyes. "Yeah," he mumbles. He winds the earbud cord around his finger, then unwinds it, then winds it again. His nails still retain a few pieces of chipped black polish.

Otabek thinks about painting Yurio's nails for him, holding the tiny brush and smoothing it along the convex plane of each fingernail. The sharp smell of the nail polish emanating from the little bottle. He thinks about the queue of tiny plants sitting on the railing. Outside, the clouds have opened up, at last; the rain is beginning to fall.

Yurio hasn’t even looked at him.

**Author's Note:**

> [Nostalgia](http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~lac14/glossary/nostos/index.ghtml). Otabek's mother speaks maghrebi darija, or Western Arabic (the dialect I speak is mashriqi ammiya), and qazaq tili, or Kazakh, hence why "Russia" is "Resey," and Yakov's last name is "Felcman." The name "Otabek" is Uzbekh; the Kazakh equivalent would be either "Otarbek" or "Atabek." The lyrics to "Aq tilek" can be found [here](https://lyricstranslate.com/en/galimjan-joldasbay-ak-tilek-ak-dilek-lyrics.html). The line Otabek imagines his mother singing translates roughly to _let everyone be happy and let the table be full, let your son grow up_.


End file.
